Casey Chan

Starting next month, US soldiers in Afghanistan will be wearing a Soldier Body Unit, a two-pound pack with four blast sensors, to collect data on concussions and traumatic brain injuries. The data the soldiers collect will help us better protect soldiers in the future.

A thousand of these Soldier Body Unit packs will be sent to soldiers in Afghanistan to wear along with 42 vehicles equipped with floor and seat mounted accelerometers to "measure the effect of blasts on soldiers inside vehicles hit by IEDs." It's a little morbid but also necessary, the Army's Rapid Equipping Force's Chief Scientist Amy O'Brien says:

"We're trying to get the data while we still can. I don't want this to sound wrong, but the data we collect from these explosions is very important for us to measure how these blasts affect a soldier's head and body"

The data collected by the sensors will go to the Joint Trauma Analysis and Prevention of Injury in Combat database. Hopefully, the medical professionals can use it to understand and better equip our soldiers in future combat situations. [Military via Defense Tech]